Why is Catholic literature so fucking dank, you faggots?

>shakespear
>christian
almost shat my spiritus

> However, many scholars have speculated about his personal religious beliefs, based on analysis of the historical record and of his published work, with claims that Shakespeare's family may have had Catholic sympathies and that he himself was a secret Catholic.
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_William_Shakespeare

HAHAHA I can refute points by greentexting randomly and making a plebbit joke.

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>Anyway, to answer your question, I think it's because Catholicism demands a lot more from believers than Protestantism, while at the same time encouraging a certain amount of intellectual consideration of its elements. So it's a real religion rather than a social club (like Low Church Protestantism), yet it also tolerates creativity and expression (unlike Islam). It's a good recipe the production of great art.

I would say it used to be the reverse in terms of how demanding Protestantism was. No stealing, then getting absolved by a priest. Actually reading the Bible for yourself. Certain Protestant groups do just seem to be trendy, faggoty social clubs these days, though. No wonder there's a shift towards Traditional Catholicism amongst right-wingers.

Read Hadrian VII by Fr. Rolfe.
No, Fr. doesn't stand for Father or Frater. It stands for Frederick for he failed the test to become a priest a record number of times. Later he styled himself Baron Corvo, you may have heard of him.

Classic book but much underrated.

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>Catholic
>reading the bible
Stop pretending your atheism rant is about Catholicism, Mr Protestant. You're worse than atheists, who can still be Catholics.

>Actually reading the Bible for yourself
Doesn't this make it less demanding for Protestants? Catholics have to be very rigorous with their Bible reading, they get it pounded into their head through schooling, they have to sift through catechism and such an extensive history of different scholars and theologians for interpretations. Getting your interpretations of the Bible from an institution like the Catholic church isn't just having opinions fed to you, it's about abiding by a very serious and strict standard. I'm not claiming Protestants don't take their Bibles seriously but the large majority aren't really attached to an institutional authority in the same way a Catholic is.

>arguing over Protestantism and Catholicism when you can be a Bible believing Baptist.

>an independent, fundamental, soul winning, King James only Baptist

Insofar as the whole Reformation was a reaction to the excesses of the Renaissance Church, it's definitely true that Protestantism was originally, and for a long time, more demanding. I might say that Protestantism was demanding in a more inward-turned way. Catholicism has lots of stuff you should do and lots of stuff you shouldn't do, laid out in doctrine and dogma. Protestantism is more personal and individual by its very nature, but those personal and individual standards used to be quite exacting.

I think what's happened is that the things Catholicism asks of its believers have largely stayed the same, while Protestantism has degraded.

>Doesn't this make it less demanding for Protestants?

From what I understand, Catholicism didn't really expect laity to be literate enough to read the Bible for some time. Protestants, originally at least, placed great emphasis on translations into vernaculars and reading it for oneself. There are various writings by the likes of Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, and so on in terms of stressing what is the "right" way.

>I think what's happened is that the things Catholicism asks of its believers have largely stayed the same, while Protestantism has degraded.

This, to some degree. Some denominations look somewhat tight-knit, however mocked (Mormons?). The Church of England seems to be just trying to act "progressive" a lot of the time (not exactly otherworldly, whatever your politics).

Jean Racine and Joost van den Vondel maybe

This is now a Baptist thread

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burn

And who won that one..

Someone knows their Kirkegaard

>when the baptists claim "god" as their favourite author
>when they get very upset about st jerome's translation being divinely inspired because god's magic only works in germanic languages
i'm sure god's radio plays are also awesome, but i'm busy reading western canon that night

can you guys recommend me some

evelyn waugh, graham greene, muriel spark are all around the same era and all easy to into. not too dated to bore newbies and not too new to be untested.

>t. Heretic

>Orlando Furioso
>Book of the New Sun
>Various works of Shakespeare

Wolfe, O'Connor and Lafferty are the patrician's trinity of contemporary Catholic authors.

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Sigrid Undset is fantastic, better than Greene and Endo, who are absolutely top tier.

> Inferno or Paradise Lost

Is it even a question? Dante, hands down. Joyce, Beckett, Pound, Eliot, literally anyone other than Milton scholars will agree. Paradise Lost is Milton being too stupid to realize he endorsed Satanism.

Dante's depiction of satan is way more interesting than Milton's "dude, satan charismatic, innit?"

Hamlet can be read as a Catholic play. You can easily read it as Shakespeare writing to his dead son wishing that he could have had a life as a virtuous Catholic. Once you get the Bloom interpretation out of your head, it's not hard to see how Hamlet is a play about forgiveness.

Joyce and Burgess and Pynchon noticed this.

>Christian
not encompassing both Protestantism and Catholicism
lern better please

>Arguing about Catholicism vs. Protestantism after Vatican II

How dumb can you fucking get. Catholicism capitulated in this fight half a century ago. 500th Anniversary of the Reformation is in October. The Pope will be celebrating; how about you?

It's a fact that anyone who complains about V2 has no idea what it is.

Does the Vicar of Christ know what it is?

I have a pretty solid grasp of it. There are a few very problematic documents, or parts of them anyway that give an opening to a heretical reading such as Nostra Aetate and Lumen Gentium, but the most damage was in fact done by Paul VI. and his new missal and an opening of gates to heterorthodox or heretical theologians as well as a loss of focus on the first and final causes.
But to say that Catholicism capitualted is as stupid as claiming that everything about the V2 is just fine.

Vatican 2 can be interpreted in light of the Church's traditional positions, on metaphysics and other things. It is perhaps a dangerous council, but not a fatal one if you use it correctly. This is what I believe Benedict was getting at with his "reform of the reform." Hopefully after Francis goes to the Lord the next pope will continue Benedict's work.

It can be, but it for the most part wasn't, wherein the problem lies.
It's also strange because it's so massive compared to the other councils. It's 10 times longer than all the proclamations of the council of Treant.

Pope Robert Sarah when?

We definitely need either an African or Asian pope next. They're very orthodox, plus it would simultaneously encourage conversions on those continents and wake up all the borderline-heretical fuckers in Europe.

A US pope would be fun too, particularly because America has some good cardinals. But we all know it's never going to happen.

>borderline heretical
why say borderline???

I was trying to be charitable, as a Christian should be.

But yeah, the next pope's going to have to kick a lot of ass. The "liberal" cardinals have become emboldened by Francis. Fortunately a lot of them are quite old and scheduled to die off in the next decade. If the traditionalists in the Church holds the line through Francis' papacy they should be fine.

As if Luther's writings weren't dank?

They aren't fiction. And they really aren't any good.

>I was trying to be charitable, as a Christian should be.
>Catholics
>charitable
pffffffff
Next you'll tell me that the Vatican is opposed to slavery.

>Vatican 2
>not fatal one
It literally was, it wasn't even a slow death, It was a shotgun blast to the face.

Only if you have any doubts at all about the Catholic Church as the One True Church, THE Church founded by Jesus Christ himself to carry out his will on Earth. Nothing can be fatal to the One True Church, because God is with it.

how can an athiest be catholic

V2 is just unaesthetic desu

Idk I consider myself a catholic atheist. I go to church once in awhile, occasionally pray, and read shit like St. Augustine, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Kierkegaard. I'm also planning on trying out some Thomas Merton and St. Maximus the Confessor.

At the same time, I think protestants are gay niggers and generally consider their beliefs and practices heretical, stupid, and unsophistiated.

try getting out a contract because you don't believe in your employer

I always wonder how many people in these types of threads are actually devout Christians or just LARPers who will be jerkin it to hentai on Sunday morning.

t. un-elect

I always wonder why some people can't fathom that there are actual Christians that exist in the same world that they do.

are all protestants such beancounters?

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The Waste Land or Ash Wednesday. More Anglo-Catholic than Catholic, but still in the same ballpark

if you're preterite there's nothing you can do, sorry brah

>when they get very upset about st jerome's translation being divinely inspired
I have run in quite a few baptist circles and I've never heard anyone complain about Jerome. Most reasonable people I know would say that the original texts were inspired but we shouldn't make the same (direct) claim for translations.

Chesterton and Endo.

Protestants are intellectual, moral, and spiritual cucks who worship the flesh and whos entire world view amounts to a form of idolatry. Thats why you're so opposed to science (whereas Catholics have supported science and intellectual culture in general for 1500 years) and obsess over irrelevant matters like the earth being 6000 years old. A true believer would understand that gods will, knowledge, and power transcends human comprehension and hence the historicity and scientific accuracy of the claims and events described in the bible is for the most part entirely irrelevant to the eternal truths which are thereby expressed (c.f. St. Augustine commetary in the Confessions on the relationship between 'science' and religion).

You can begin to see here why an atheist like myself is more of a genuine Christian and believer than most protestants could ever be.

Toshio Shimao, one of the greatest Japanese writers. Unfortunately very little of his work is translated into English.

sounds like someones been predestined for the lake of fire

who're you to judge?

“It is an unchristian religion, in the first place!' the prince resumed in great agitation and with excessive sharpness. 'That's in the first place, and secondly, Roman Catholicism is even worse than atheism - that's my opinion. Yes, that's my opinion! Atheism merely preaches a negation, but Catholicism goes further: it preaches a distorted Christ, a Christ calumniated and defamed by it, the opposite of Christ! It preaches Antichrist - I swear it does, I assure you it does! This is my personal opinion, an opinion I've held for a long time, and it has worried me a lot myself. ... Roman Catholicism believes that the Church cannot exist on earth without universal temporal power, and cries: Non possumus! In my opinion, Roman Catholicism isn't even a religion, but most decidedly a continuation of the Holy Roman Empire, and everything in it is subordinated to that idea, beginning with faith. The Pope seized the earth, an earthly throne and took up the sword; and since then everything has gone on in the same way, except that they've added lies, fraud, deceit, fanaticism, superstition wickedness. They have trifled with the most sacred, truthful, innocent, ardent feelings of the people, have bartered it all for money, for base temporal power. And isn't this the teaching of Antichrist? Isn't it clear that atheism had to come from them? And it did come from them, from Roman Catholicism itself! Atheism originated first of all with them: how could they believe in themselves? It gained ground because of abhorrence of them; it is the child of their lies and their spiritual impotence! Atheism! In our country it is only the upper classes who do not believe, as Mr Radomsky so splendidly put it the other day, for they have lost their roots. But in Europe vast numbers of the common people are beginning to lose their faith - at first from darkness and lies, and now from fanaticism, hatred of the Church and Christianity!” --Dosto

>Quoting a character written by a novelist known for his polyphony as proof of the author's beliefs

Basically just a load of high fallutin language saying that the Catholic Church = bad because they are concerned with amassing wealth and "temporal power"

Well the faith isn't gonna spread itself on good will and prayers alone, you need missionaries, schools and charity organisations. All that has to be paid for by a central authority, particularly if the government of said country isn't Christian. Would Christianity have spread throughout Europe without the influence of missionaries from Rome?

I just put Dosto in the by-line so there was enough information to track down the source. I wasn't implying that it was a direct statement of Dosto's thoughts.

It's not like Orthodoxy is any better. Since the time of Peter the Great it's been a subordinate of the Russian State, making it a political force just as much as the Catholic Church. Hell, Protestantism is worse than the Catholic Church in this regard. Think about Megachurches, about Profit Theology, about the Bishop of Canterbury.

At least protestants didn't try to sell get out of help free cards.

*hell

www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_K6FG703nk

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But you must believe, user. You must accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. That's the only way any of any of this makes any sense. Don't forget about people who doubt, like . And, moreover, don't worry about whether you've convinced themo or not; rather, answer them for your own sake. All the way back to Saint Paul, Christians have maintained a real, genuine belief in the Resurrection, and the divine power of Christ. This is what makes the Catholic Church so great, and what allows it to endure. The Church has not forgotten that Christ is Risen. This offends and shames so many people, but the Church proclaims it anyway. Even when everyone who is "sensible" declares it superstition and delusion, you must proclaim that Christ is Risen. Without it, nothing the Catholic Church does makes sense. With it, everything the Catholic Church does snaps into focus. It's the skeleton key that unlocks the entire millennia-long history of the Church. The truth of Christ's Resurrection makes sense of everything in Catholicism, even the puzzling, baffling things.

If anything they "get out of purgatory" cards, and there's nothing intrinsically wrong with the practice. When you sin it stains your soul, even if you repent. The purpose of purgatory is to clean yourself before entering the presence of God. It's a painful but temporary deal. We can help clean our souls while on earth by performing corporal works of mercy, like praying, fasting, volunteering, donating to the church or to charity and so on. It's this last one which was exploited by bad clergy but even then it did what it was supposed to do, the people buying indulgences were doing a good thing.

>tfw no catholic gf

Good to know that there's other Catholic atheists out there. Since about the beginning of the year I've tried to practice and belief, but it's hard. But worse than all that is having to think about everything in terms of my faith, thinking "As a Catholic, can I do this? Can I do that? Can I like this? Can I tolerate that?" I don't like having my thoughts determined for me. And the Catholic view of art, that the only good art is art that closely imitates God (proof by beauty, etc etc), seems extremely limited to me. Most of the art I like is secular. Plus secular culture is so out of touch with the Christian message that it's hard to stay Christian without resenting everything. And all that being said, I do disagree with a lot of what the church teaches (its teachings on divorce, homosexuality, and contraception, for instance).

I find it easier (and more effective) to be an atheist with Christian sympathies than a Christian with atheist sympathies, which is what I would have to be as a believer these days. That or I join the Old Rite

To paraphrase Santayana, there is no God, and the Virgin Mary is his mother.

>As a Catholic, can I do this? Can I do that? Can I like this? Can I tolerate that?

Are you a cradle Catholic? That's something that I noticed they do and I don't know why. I'm a devout convert and I don't think like that at all, I just want to be good. That's my guiding principle in life--is it good.

Not really. I was born into a Catholic family, but my parents are both atheists. I was an atheist myself up until last year when I started to make some serious changes in my life and started to see bottom. So in a way I'm probably closer to a convert than a cradle Catholic.

How do you not think like that? I just feel like Catholicism is such an all-encompassing belief system that it's hard for me to do anything without reference to it. Right now I'm taking a break from it and focus just on being as selfless as I can be. It doesn't help that I'm a fairly left-wing guy, so my political views are generally at odds with most Catholics I meet.

I'm not him, but raised Catholic, and I'd feel more closely to what you do. So many of the prohibitions are just natural to me, I find it strange when I come across people who don't do them.

I live in a mostly Catholic country though, so it's normal to see specific saints or parades and have their meaning understood in ways that wouldn't be normal in the US or UK for instance. If it weren't ingrained in my culture also, I might act like you describe cradle Catholics.

I would say though, because I'm self excommunicating, it does make me stand out and more aware of not practicing to come from a Catholic country. On Ash Wednesday, for instance, you stand out if you haven't been to Mass and received ashes. It drives home that I'm not as active as I could be if I would confess.

dostoyevsky is the obvious answer. you are illiterate or playing dumb.

Is this what Papists actually believe? I'm glad Luther and Calvin gave them what was coming for them, truly the church of the antichrist.

tbqh that almost certainly is dostoyevsky's belief. iirc he was obsessed with the book of revelation and speculated that the pope might be the antichrist.

>How do you not think like that?

I honestly don't know. I guess it's the knowledge that a sin is only a sin if it's knowingly committed. I don't have to worry about accidentally sinning since I either know it's a sin or not. I only have to worry about not doing the things that I know are bad, and that sort of stuff doesn't take a lot of consideration so I'm not constantly worrying about what the Church thinks.

That makes sense. But I also tend to worry about other people's sins too, because I think it would be dishonest to just to validity of Catholicism in terms of how it suits me only.

>he's never been half way through a bacon sammich when he realized it was good friday
i should get a calendar.

I find myself in a weird position because I was raised Catholic like , but somewhere along the line I seemed to kick up a gear and become devout like is.

What's interesting about it all is that it seems to me, from my very devout perspective, that the reality of God seems to supersede a lot of considerations of those who don't think about God as much. So, like, as says, you might say, "Well, I have to do this because God wants it," or "I can't do this, because God doesn't allow it," and that seems like a burden. But as I've grown more devout, the feeling has much more been, "I do this in the name of God," or "I don't do this, for the glory of God." God seems a real, immediate presence in my life, so the Church's doctrines and dogmas seem much less arbitrary to me. Insofar as I am a devout Catholic, it seems to me that God is very much real, and the Church really is his instrument on Earth, so it doesn't bug me as much to follow the Church's teachings. It at feels reasonable in light of the reality of God's existence, which is very immediate for me these days.

Interesting perspective, I suppsoe that's how I should think about it. I should want to follow God, not force myself too.

here. I agree on the positive side of things. Certain moral issues become "the buck stops here" stuff only the phrasing is more like "I AM THE SWORD OF ISRAEL AND WOE BETIDE THOSE WHO DO NOT KNOW GOD AND TREMBLE FOR EVEN DEMONS KNOW HIS POWER AND THEY TREMBLE". But that dogged sense of morality isn't necessarily common to the Church, and I'd say the Jesuits are probably the only order where it's promoted. If it were more common, more people who attend might excommunicate themselves also, especially considering the unfolding scandals, and it's a kind of fundamentalism the Church is probably wise to not promote, not just for her own sake.

>and I'd say the Jesuits are probably the only order where it's promoted.

I am deeply suspicious of the Jesuits these days, mostly because they play so fast and loose with doctrine. I don't know how it happened, but they seem to have developed a lack of respect for the magesterium, and that's the last thing we need. The response to the disaster of Modernity and the scandals inside the Church should be to adhere more tightly than ever to the things we know are true, which are the core teachings of the Church. If we cling tightly to the Barque of Peter we'll be all right.

That's why my favorite priestly order is the Dominicans. They seem to be scrupulously adherent to the timeless teachings of the Church, and they're not shy about calling out heresy, at least based on the Dominican priests I've seen on social media. They seem to take the inheritance of Thomas Aquinas pretty seriously. Plus, on top of Aquinas, the Dominicans are devoted to the Rosary, which is something all Catholics can trust. When all else fails we should pray the Rosary, because the Blessed Virgin will always stand by her adherents.

They have always been that way. It's why they always wind up getting called back to Rome. Don't worry, it was much worse in the 60-80s. They used go around committing felonies to help draft dodgers and all kinds of shit. They're in a quiet period if anything.

It really is a shame, because one of the best priests I ever personally encountered was a Jesuit, and I have great respect for certain individual Jesuits. But the order as a whole seems to be a heretical mess. Their superior general even recently said that the Gospels might have to be "reinterpreted," and I'm not sure what to do with that except break out the swords and send him to the Inquisition. It's all kind of fucked up. I feel like the Jesuits need a major retooling, but that's not going to happen with Francis as pope, not the least of which because Francis IS a Jesuit.

For someone unaware, what exactly is wrong with the Jesuits? I know about the "the end justifies the means" conspiracies associated with them back in the day, but what is wrong with them today?

it's a structural thing. they have no hierarchy, and their purpose is to educate about christianity. they were pretty bellicose when they started because they're the reason most of south america are catholics. a lot of them got called back for slave rings at various points in those missions. they're kind of the libertarians of the tradition. like they have a prohibition on becoming doctors because that only tends to man's body, and they're concerned with the spirit, so a lot of them get into alternative and native religions/medicine, while also admonishing the natives for not understanding the spiritual totality of jesus. most orders that shit would stop before it got to the archbishop.